20230806 - Revelation 1 part 4 (vs 10-16)

So lastly, let's talk about our middle section of the Kay

where this whole section points to

and says, and his voice was like the roar of many waters

on the surface. It's a great and mighty voice like rushing water

like Niagara Falls.

Are you guys all sleeping?

Water's rushing down, crashing into the water and rocks below?

This is an impressive sound,

but

that's not only what revelation is talking about here. I think this is part of it.

It is a magnificent voice if we actually heard it,

but there's something deeper than just a strong sound.

If water is coming out of his mouth,

what's the effect of water coming out of his mouth?

Biblically speaking,

we've seen this in our studies through the last few books. We've done.

What does water do

in the Bible?

Water in the Bible is cleansing.

The fire comes from his eyes that is refining and

there is water from his mouth that is cleansing.

So Jesus has finished his work.

He's ascended up to heaven and now he's going to cleanse the earth.

He cleanses it with his word.

When the word is preached, it is the effect of cleansing.

And this is still true today.

If you go somewhere and preach the word of God, it's going to rile people up,

they might become angry.

His word is powerful and it goes forth and cleanses things and it's fire

and go

and it's fire and goes forth and burns things up.

Jesus starts this cleansing right away.

It as the next two chapters in revelation to each of these seven churches,

he says to them shape up.

I have this against you. You're doing OK.

Let's deal with the Harlot over here. That's what he's doing.

He's cleansing, he's cleaning up his churches.

This water and fire are both in a sense, cleansing.

You have some cloth that you want to clean, you use water.

If you have some metal thing that you want to clean up, you use fire,

it burns off the drops.

These are two cleansing agents and they are

the two cleansing agents that we learned about.

In Leviticus.

We read all kinds of instances where you wash your feet, you wash your garment,

you wash up animals.

And if there's a bronze pot, you could cleanse it by fire.

If you had a priest daughter that was profane herself,

you would burn her up with fire.

So both of those cleansing agents look from Leviticus are mentioned here

and they are part of the ascended work of Jesus to cleanse the world.

We can see this wa this river of water.

Cleansing,

start way back in the Bible and it gets bigger and bigger and better and better.

We learned about

the labor of cleansing

long time ago in the Tabernacle that water was still, it didn't move.

And we talked about a little bit the same labor in the temple,

but now it's bigger and there are actually 10 labors placed on chariots

and that placing them on chariots gave the symbolism.

It didn't actually look like flowing water,

but a chariot that moves down and these labors are on it.

It was to symbolize that it is mo moving and flowing from the temple.

Then if we keep going in temple imagery in the Ezekiel's vision of the temple,

the river flows all the way from the temple out to the dead sea.

And then here in revelation,

the rivers run down the streets of New Jerusalem all the way

to the ends of the world roof will get to that eventually.

But this is the progression of this stream of water that's coming out of

hip from his voice.

So the stream of water,

the cleansing word of God is flowing forth to cleanse the world.

And it's the word that does that

and it's so easy. At least for me to forget that

so often, even when we have good intentions, we wanna set up icons,

we want to run for political office,

we wanna have Christian music artists take over.

We want to change the world through these things.

But it's the word of God, the scriptures taught and expounded on as they are

that have this effect. Actually, there's nothing wrong with those things.

But the word of God is the thing that

actually can move mountains and change the world.

The central aspect of this whole passage today is not what Jesus looks like,

but what he sounds like.

It's not a picture of Jesus like we saw last week.

It's the voice, the voice that has been transcribed into his word that we are to hear.

That always is the most important

Deuteronomy 4 15 says, therefore,

watch yourselves very carefully since you saw no form on

that day that the Lord spoke to you at ho

out of the midst of the fire.

The voice even back then was what was to be listened to. We live by faith, not by sight

like we read earlier,

John rejoices that the voice is here because the bride is going to be called

as the bride. We need to be attuned to what his word says.

We need to hear his voice through the Bible. Each and every day

you have a big meeting coming up at work and you need to get there early.

Too bad, get up earlier, take the time, hear his voice.

Kids are up early again, food got spilled everywhere you have to grocery shop,

there's laundry stuff is piling up.

Who cares? Hear and learn his voice.

You could only get an early tea time and you don't want to wake up earlier. Suck it up.

Buttercup. Get up early, immerse yourself in his word.

Immerse yourself in the bride groom. That's calling.

It needs to be our number one priority and not only our priority,

it should be our number one desire.

Like we talked about last week,

we need to be a bride that desires our bride

groom's voice and then to meet him in the flesh.

How can we hear him and recognize his voice if we never hear it,

if we never engage and absorb ourselves in his word and his presence,

John 10, we just read this in our bible study yesterday.

The sheep hear his voice and he calls his own sheep by name

and leads them out when he is brought out all of his own,

he goes before them and the sheep follow him for, they know his voice.

A stranger.

They will not follow but they will flee from him

for they do not know the voice of strangers.

Do we know his voice or do we know the voice of strangers?

All those voices that we listened to earlier?

We knew many of them because they have distinctive voices and you've

heard them over and over in all different areas of our lives.

Jesus's voice is distinctive too in that it speaks truth like no one else can

we need to hear it in all aspects of our lives.

When we encounter something in our lives,

we can hear Jesus speaking through his word that pops in our head

in that moment because we have bathed ourselves in his word daily.

We know our shepherd's voice and would listen and follow it anywhere

the bride groom is calling us. Are we listening? Do we even recognize his voice?

One last interesting part of this voice, this powerful,

strong voice that cleanses and changes the world.

Well, when John hears this voice in revelation, one,

something unexpected happens.

Let's read it again because it's really easy to gloss over it.

Revelation 1 12 said,

then I turned to see the voice that was speaking to me. And on turning,

I saw seven golden lamp stands.

When John turns his first sight of Jesus is actually a glimpse of the church.

This is pretty humbling. If you think about it, this voice is so important.

It's the central thing in this passage and throughout the Bible.

And the first sight of this voice is us, the church,

the church of holt and shines the light of Jesus in the world.

This is not reading too much into this because in revelation 19,

this idea has continued and it's made even stronger.

I think

it says in verse six, then I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude,

like the roar of many waters and like the sound of mighty peels of thunder crying out.

Hallelujah. For the Lord, our God, the Almighty reins.

So the voice of many Waters is

the voice of the great multitude.

What we just saw is the description of Jesus

is now described as the great multitude that is

sending forth their voice.

What this shows is that all of us are voices of Christ.

We are the voice of Christ in the sense that there

isn't anywhere where you can go and physically hear Jesus's voice.

But he has multitudes of voices.

Every faithful pastor, every faithful Christian is at one time or another.

One of these voices.

What do these voices do? Then?

The same as what Jesus's voice?

Did they cleanse and change the world like we talked about.

We need to know Jesus's voice though through his word,

then we need to go forth and ourselves be that voice to the world.

If we go preach God's word, the truest truth like we talked about last week,

people will be moved by it.

They might not like it. They might say, who are you to say that I can't live this way?

Who are you to say that I'm a sinner that needs to repent.

Well, actually I'm the voice of Christ.

I am but a drop of water.

But if we all boldly proclaim the truth, we are like the roar of many waters.

Stagger Falls has nothing on all of us.

And this will have the effect of cleansing.

The word of God is powerful. The word of God is like water that sweeps away the wicked.

We have been given the flaming sword to cut people up.

We have been given the privilege to be a part of Jesus's voice, this water.

I believe that the church has much more power and potential than any of us believe.

I don't accept that.

We need to sit around and wait for the world to get

more and more wicked and wait for Jesus to come back.

I don't believe that that theology is actually found in the Bible.

What is found is that we have a voice of the king of kings.

We can change the world, but we must

know his voice.

It needs to be more recognizable than any other name.

Any other voice to us more than Kermit the frog,

more than Frank Sinatra or James Earl Jones.

Only then when we truly fully know it, can we mimic it to the world? We are his voice.

Revelation 19 1 says after this,

I heard what seemed to be the loud voice of a great multitude in heaven.

Crying out. Hallelujah, salvation and glory and power belong to our God.

Let's pray

dear me, father. We thank you for

the amazing privilege that it is to be a part of your voice. Lord,

it's humbling to think about what that actually means.

Lord, I pray that

you will find us worthy, that we will know your name,

that we will know your voice and we will

follow it and that's what we will proclaim Lord.

So it won't be our own voice, our own words, Lord. But it will truly be your word.

That is truer than truth.

We thank you Lord for your word today in revelation. Thank you for how it

intertwines with the whole Bible Lord.

And that it all becomes hopefully clearer and clearer to us

what your word is telling us and who you are.

Thank you Lord for being our holy warrior

in Jesus name. Amen.

20230806 - Revelation 1 part 4 (vs 10-16) - 4

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